Psychology of Diversity

Dr. Mona Sue Weissmark is a professor, researcher, author, and clinical psychologist. She is the founder and head of The Science of Diversity Lab and GWG Enterprises, LLC an Illinois-based company focused on educational research. Weissmark is best known for her experiment of bringing children of Holocaust survivors together with children of Nazis at the Harvard Medical School, and later, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of African American slaves with descendants of slave owners. Her research is profiled in the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, Psychology Today, The Jerusalem Report, The Guardian, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Weissmark is the author of many journal articles and books, including Doing Psychotherapy Effectively (University of Chicago Press), Justice Matters: Legacies of the Holocaust and World War II (Oxford University Press), and The Science of Diversity, (Oxford University Press), which was recognized by the American Psychological Association as one of the top nine most important books of 2020 to address racism and hate. She is also the founder and former director of the Program Initiative for Global Mental Health Studies at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies at Northwestern University and former tenured psychology professor at Roosevelt University. She is also a part-time associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. Weissmark is passionate about teaching. She has taught thousands of students about the psychology and science of diversity, research methods, and clinical and social psychology. She received Harvard Extension School's JoAnne Fussa Distinguished Teaching Award. She earned her bachelor's degree from McGill University, her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, and completed a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in the department of psychology at Harvard University.